Today In "Not a Dime's Worth of Difference" News, Ctd.

Today, by two, narrow 5-4 decisions, the Supreme Court told gay and lesbian Americans that they have the same federal civil rights that I have.  Of course, if you live in any of the 37 states where same sex marriage is illegal, that same Supreme Court just told you that you're on your own by virtually guaranteeing that no federal cavalry will ever show up to take your side against the Randite Theocrat Philistines who run your state.

So a deeply flawed outcome, but a big improvement over the status quo.

And speaking of Randite Theocrat Philistines, Tony Scalia takes up his acid pen to share with us the state-of-the-art in Conservative thinking on the subject:

To be sure (as the majority points out), the legislation is called the Defense of Marriage Act. But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “disparage,” ”injure,” “degrade,” ”demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

Fresh from this latest defeat in the Culture War, Republican members of Congress are expected to salve their wounds in the traditional fashion: cracking open a case of wildly ignorant, inappropriate rape comments, comparing school kids in LA to Hitler Youth (Glenn Beck, today), staging a dozen more symbolic votes telling women and people who need health care to go piss up a rope, after which Charles Darwin will be burned in effigy.

At the state-level, the Court has once again reaffirmed its commitment to let Republicans continue dispensing with any fig-leaf of subtlety and sanity whatsoever and just let their Handmaid's Tale freak flags fly.

I include myself in the group that sees today's Court ruling as an important if flawed and imperfect step forward in advancing the civil rights of a traditionally despised and discriminated against minority which, in turn, I hope will make the civil rights all Americans that much more secure.

I also found the reaction from the world's most famous Libertarian by turns fascinating, amazingly clueless, hopeful and deeply human.


Consider that, like a depressingly large number of relatively privileged Libertarians,  Mr. Greenwald is always willing to lecture others on the abstract merits of making the Perfect the enemy of the Less Awful -- to exhort "liberals and progressives" to sacrifice some nonspecific "short term political interests" and even get "a few more Republicans to be elected than otherwise might be elected" -- in the noble cause of crashing the system, and busting up the two parties so that some ideal, third or fourth of fifth party alternatives can rise to power:

And that’s the position that so many liberals and progressives have been in. Which is, you know, really finding Democratic policies to be repellent and yet at the same time, at the end of the day saying, well you’ve convinced me that they’re just a tiny, little bit worse. And the only way to break that is to say well, even though I know that by abstaining or supporting a third party, I’m going to be sacrificing some of my short term political interests; I’m going to be causing a few more Republicans to be elected than otherwise might be elected; on balance, I’m willing to sacrifice my short term interests in order to do something to subvert the stranglehold that these two parties have on the political process because electing more Democrats, even though it’s a little less scary, accomplishes nothing good.

To ever do anything less -- to compromise in the slightest by giving one side your support "because you’ve scared me that the other alternative is just a little bit worse" -- is an act of abject cowardice and capitulation which will only "guarant[ee] that you’ll always be ignored."

This is Mr. Greenwald's simple and clear Law of Political Purity which applies unbendingly to all times to all people and to all issues...

...except, of course, when the issue at hand actually affects Mr. Greenwald personally, in which case:

@peaceak If you were barred from living with your spouse in your own country because of this inequality, you'd probably see it differently
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 26, 2013

Ponder on that for a second.

Fascinating and hilariously clueless, certainly, but also hopeful and deeply human because it holds open the possibility that someday it may just dawn on Mr. Greenwald that other people are not abstract game pieces to be shoved around on his ideological Stratego board but are, in fact, every bit as real and complex and contradictory and rationalizing and humane and selfish and heroic and flawed and glorious as he is.

That someday the Compassion Fairy may leave enough empathy under Mr. Greenwald's  pillow to cause him to notice that, while there are real villains in the world, there are also lots of people who are not Mr. Greenwald -- people of color, poor people, sick people, old people, frail people, undocumented worker people, uninsured people, frightened middle class people, female people -- who make choices with which Mr. Greenwald does not agree in the abstract because the consequences of those choices affect them personally in the same way the same-sex marriage decision affects Mr. Greenwald personally.  

That someday something will pry open Mr. Greenwald's human awareness far enough to encompass the idea that there are real people in the real world who do not have the luxury of buying an adjoining condo in Mr. Greenwald's ivory tower and who sometimes make choices and compromises with which Mr. Greenwald does not agree not because they are Obots or cultists or authoritarian monsters but because they live and struggle and die in the real world under circumstances where the alternative to that imperfect choice really is much worse.  

I am very glad that the center/slightly-left wing of the Supreme Court was able to twice lure one vote away from the Batshit Wingnut wing of the Supreme Court in order to secure two, flawed rulings which will allow Mr. Greenwald the choice of living with his husband as a married couple in either the United States or Brazil.  

I also hope that, in addition to giving him some imperfect but improved alternatives from which to choose, it also blesses Mr. Greenwald with a slightly different perspective on the motives of people who are not Mr. Greenwald and who also believe that choosing between flawed alternatives is sometimes a better choice than going on strike until perfection arrives.